


equivoque

by shelightsupwell



Category: Now You See Me (Movies)
Genre: Danny's perspective, F/M, Missing Scene, references to the other Horsemen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-20 00:05:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7382989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shelightsupwell/pseuds/shelightsupwell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Henley rolls her eyes. "Bullshit, Danny. You don't know how they think, because we've never seen them. We don't even know who they </i>are<i>." All they have is Dylan's word, and she likes Dylan a hell of a lot more than he does, but that doesn't mean his word is sacred to either of them.</i></p>
<p>Henley's restless and Danny's emotionally stupid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	equivoque

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a hell of a long time since I shared any fic, but this idea got stuck in my head. Thank you to Kait for the encouragement and to Laine for the beta.

It's not like he doesn't try.

In those first giddy days after it all ends (all begins), when they still think they're really, truly in the Eye and not that they're going to be strung along like patsies for months and months on end, Danny doesn't even have to _try_. Rhodes installs them in an apartment, their old hideout useless to them now, and it's just like the last year and nothing like it at all.

Success is an aphrodisiac. That's not just him, he's pretty sure, that's most people. The whole world is talking about them, their vanishing act on every channel, and the future is bright and bursting with possibility. And Henley, Henley is more beautiful than ever. Victory looks good on her.

It always has. He's just never wanted to admit it before.

He doesn't try to name it or say it. For once, he doesn't plan. There's a spare moment, quiet, alone. Rhodes is gone, Jack and Merritt in the other room playing around, and there's him, in a half-lit hallway. And there's her, close, smiling, and that soft smugness that's been hovering around them both since he took her hand and they climbed onto a carousel going everywhere and nowhere at once.

And then there's them, her back against the wall, her lips as soft as he's imagined they would be, too many times to count, too many times to admit.

They're right about him. Alright, so he has control issues. Most people do, he thinks, in some form or another. His are just, maybe, a little _more_ than most. They think, when he plans, he imagines perfection. He doesn't. He imagines disaster. He thinks of the hundreds of ways a thing can go wrong, the better to account for problems and root them out before they occur. But kissing Henley is messy and warm and real and he doesn't need perfect. He's been waiting years for _this_. For her. Solid fact.

They're on top of the world together in a shitty New York apartment with thin walls and loud friends, too many eyes watching, and he doesn't care. He can't say he's always been terrible at relationships, because he's never tried, never really wanted to. Henley’s an exception to a rule.

There’s work to do for the four of them, but there’s lots of free time, too, and what he doesn’t spend of that alone, he spends with her. They talk, laugh, tease, they work on tricks, they make plans for all the places they want to go and the shows they can do in each one that they couldn't do anywhere else. What does a show in Montmartre look like? What about one in Berlin? How could they make San Francisco a standout performance?

That she knows him better than anyone else is nothing new. For the work they've done together, with the Horsemen, but before that, too, she's had to. He tries not to think about the years in between, only the way that she understands him, sometimes without a word. He focuses on the future and now, on learning her in ways he only ever imagined before. For a little while, it all works. For a little while, Danny believes.

The problem isn't the deck getting shuffled up, order thrown into chaos. It's that it doesn't happen. They might as well be sitting on a shelf, collecting dust. It’s only a matter of weeks before it starts to chafe. It’s only months before Dylan's promises to ring hollow.

Trust him. Be patient. The Eye has a plan.

Danny's starting to doubt it.

"I just don't understand," Henley says, deep in the winter. She stretches out on her stomach, chin on her hands, watching him run through a series of flourishes. "I thought they wanted us. Why put us through all of that just to leave us sitting around? What kind of a plan is that?"

"I don't know." He grits his teeth, refusing to look down at the cards, not wanting to look into her eyes.  It’s not the first time she’s brought this up. He doesn’t know how much longer he can be patient, waiting around for orders that never come, but he’ll be damned if she gets him to say it. "They've been around a lot longer than us. They think in, I don't know, years, not weeks."

Henley rolls her eyes. "Bullshit, Danny. You don't know how they think, because we've never seen them. We don't even know who they _are_." All they have is Dylan's word, and she likes Dylan a hell of a lot more than he does, but that doesn't mean his word is sacred to either of them.

If they start to doubt, though, he's not sure what's left.

But she can't help it. Henley has always been like that, he thinks, tinkering with things, picking them apart, putting them back together. She's got a gift for the crafting of tricks. For dismantling them, too. Half of what she learned from him, she gleaned for herself, quick and clever. He's always loved that about her, even when he hated it. So she doesn't let it go, and god, he fucking wishes that she would, but he won’t cave and say that either. She just keeps pushing at it, bringing it back up every time he thinks she's done. It's never done; it just gets worse, every day carrying them further away from their last show at Five Pointz. 

"We gave them a year," she says later. Another week, another fight. He’s learned to see the battle coming in the line of her shoulders, the way she picks at the palm of her glove, restless, too much nervous energy running through her. He keeps thinking things are fine, and then she’s back at it, and he’s so tired. " _Two_ years, Danny. We risked everything. The least they could do is _meet_ us. We deserve to know who we're waiting for."

“We deserve an audience, you mean,” he says dryly. Leaning forward over the desk in their room, he shakes his head, honing in on the gimmick he's crafting. Trying to, anyway. "Let it go."

"Since when do you take orders from anyone?" Her restlessness sucks up all the air in the room, leaves him sick and winded. She's taunting him, when she has to know he's every bit as exhausted as she is. The amount of energy it takes to do _nothing_ is remarkable. He's fucking stifled, waiting like this, always waiting. She has to know that. "You can't tell me you like this any better than I do. We're losing our fans. We're losing our careers. To do what, sit home all day?"

His hand slips and he hisses. " _Fuck_."

They have bricks upon bricks of cards. Wasting one isn't the issue, except for how it reminds him they can't just go to the store to pick up new decks anymore. They all have to be ordered, which, yes, is often cheaper, but it all goes to some anonymous P.O. box under a fake name, another fucking reminder.

They're stuck here.

She _feels_ stuck here. It radiates off her, and, when he looks up, pushing the torn layers of the card aside, he remembers she's every bit as stubborn as he is. If she wants to go, she will. She always has.

"Okay, well, that one's fucking ruined. I hope you're happy."

"I'm not," she says, sour. That's the problem.

She's not happy. Not here. Not with him.

Look, it's not like he wants to be here doing nothing, making gimmicks for busy work because there's nowhere else to go and it's either do something or lose his mind. But she's here. He isn't trying to leave. 

"So what," he asks, cheeks and voice drawn tight, eyes narrowed, "what do you propose we do then? Because all Dylan is going to do is tell you that they have a plan."

"So do we." He doesn't expect the softness of her, the abrupt shift. He'd thought she was spoiling for a fight. Maybe he was just projecting. "Danny, think about it. All the places we want to go, all the shows... You and me. Like before, but better. What are we still waiting for? Let's just do it."

"What? No." Before he even realizes, he's on his feet, pacing. He doesn't mean to reject her suggestion out of hand, but it doesn't take any thought for him to know it's a terrible idea. "What happened to—I thought you trusted them. Us."

"I didn't say I don't—"

"You can't just pick up and leave because you're _bored_."

"That's not what I'm saying."

"There is a plan," he says, unhearing, "and a—a team, and we stick to it. That's what we agreed to. That's what _you_ wanted—"

"And it was fun!" Henley presses her hands to her face, and he thinks she might be counting or praying, anything to shut him out for a moment. It's far from their first fight since they got here, but he’s always been able to convince himself it was merely academic before, or idle fantasies. But she's serious.

His chest tightens. It's the kind of sharp-edged panic that comes right before a trick goes south, everything falling down around his ears. "It was. But things change, Danny. This is a dead end. You know it's a dead end. Stop pretending like I’m the only one here who has doubts.”

"You can't just—you can't just leave. Henley. What happened to—" He raises his hands, waving them, mocking. "'Oh, we're a team now, we're a family'?"

He's pretty sure she wants to slap him. It's not like he hasn't seen that look before, the shadow crossing her face, the set of her jaw and the tightening of her hand mirroring his own. "We are," she says. "Of _course_ we are. But we can't let that hold us back forever. Danny, don't you want... more?"

Of course he does. She fucking knows that. And it's a nice thought, sure, the two of them riding off into the sunset, performing in Dubai and Venice and Sao Paolo. The adventure. The romance. Bringing magic around the world in their wake.

"I can't believe you'd just leave them like that."

"We can't spend our lives waiting." Something catches in her voice and he frowns, suddenly lost. There's something else here and he doesn't understand. " _I_ can't— _I_ need more. Don't you get it? Can't you just—" She stops, like the voice is gone from her throat. He stops pacing, watching her, waiting in the heavy silence.

"Come with me, Danny."

It's like all the wind getting knocked out of him at once. He wishes she had slapped him instead.

There's a moment in the trick when the magician lets you decide. _And that's the one you chose?_ she asks. _You don't want to change your mind? No? Alright, good._ Everything in the open, everything fair and even.

But it never is. That's the point. It's supposed to feel like a choice, to sound like one. It isn't one.

Magician's choice, they call it. Equivoque. Meaningless verbal misdirection.

If she can walk away from Jack and Merritt, from Dylan, from the life she had before all this, then she can walk away from him, too. It wouldn't be the first time. And it wouldn't matter if they were in Paris or Rome. She can always leave. It doesn't feel like a choice. It doesn't feel like a possibility. It's inevitable.

"I can't believe you're saying this."

" _Danny_..."

"I can't believe you're just going to walk away from all this, from us. After all that bullshit about trust and how worth it it's all been—if you don't want to be here, you don't have to be here. No one's making you stay."

"That's not what I'm saying!"

He scowls. "The Eye requires absolute faith," he says. "Have you thought about that? Absolute faith. What else was all of this for? We have given everything—not just you, all of us—everything to be here. Maybe that's why we're still waiting. Because the rest of us believe and you—if you don't believe—well, maybe you're right. Maybe you shouldn't be here."

She lets out a little gasp, an exhale, like she's the one who's been sucker punched. And he waits, he waits for her to say something, anything at all to erase the words he's left hanging in the air, but it doesn't come.

Instead she walks away. She turns on her heel and walks out, without even giving him the satisfaction of slamming the door behind her. Even when she tells the others she's leaving, she leaves him out of it, half turned away, profile shielded by her hair. How she’s leaving. How she still loves them, but she can’t live like this. How they’re releasing her, like she’s been some kind of a prisoner here, held hostage, when he thought for a moment there they were actually happy. None of it is directed at him, in a way that feels pointed pretty squarely in his direction.

Later he thinks maybe that's exactly what she wanted. For him to know he had the last word. That's what he always wants, isn't it? As if he isn't stuck with her voice in his head, echoing over the months that follow.

_Come with me, Danny._

Dylan may not have a plan, but the Eye does. _He_ does. And Henley can do whatever she wants, forever the escape artist. She was always going to. He tried. He _tried_. 

And that was the trick, right? To make him think he had a choice when there was never any other option. When she was always going to leave, the way she always does. That was only a trick. _The choice is yours,_ the magician says, but she's always pulling the strings. _I never touched the cards_ and _you picked that one_ mean nothing when she's the one in control. Wasn't she?

And like a fucking layman, he’s left wondering what would have happened if he’d picked the other card.


End file.
